


13 Steps to Babysitting and Arson

by Carbocat



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, De-Aged Ray Palmer, Uncle Mick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 04:20:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: Mick found himself in the only situation where the question 'what would Snart do' doesn't end in a felony.





	13 Steps to Babysitting and Arson

The first sign of trouble was not that Rip begrudgingly admitted that the Legends did, in fact, run much smoother on their worse day under the captaincy of Sara than they ever did with him at the helm. Nor was it in the fact that soon after those words left his condescending British newly-not-evil mouth, the replicator was damaged in a “team building” activity (extreme capture the flag; like regular capture the flag but with fire).

No. The first sign that trouble was brewing was that there was not a single wrench left on the entire ship to fix it. They couldn’t exactly make a new wrench given that the replicator was broken.

Rip didn’t exactly take the words back but he did vocalize that he was utterly amazed that they hadn’t all died due to their own stupidity when Gideon helpfully pointed out that the last of their wrenches had been thrown into the time stream with a tracker on it for ‘experimental reasons.’ It was practically tangible how much he hated to even ask what happened to the _other_ wrenches in what was previously a fully stocked lab.

The responses varied from noncommittal shrugs and unintelligent ‘uh’ and ‘well, you see…’ to mumbling about exoskeleton strength and ‘don’t blame me, it was Martin and Jax that were practicing transmutation with the lab equipment.’

“And _why_  isn't transmutation used to make a new one?”

“Do you want to interrupt Gray’s quality time with his family?”

 It all ended with the resigned realization that a trip to Home Depot was somewhere in their future (or past).

If you asked Mick, and no one ever did, the first step in the very problem that he was dealing with now was that wrenches don’t change all that much in the centuries.

The second step would be the decision that in all of time and space, Rip had settled on Central City, 2016, as a fine stopping off place to get a replacement from Home Depot. A literal, nothing special, regular old Home Depot.

The third step was, of course, Haircut losing the game of ‘not it’ and being sent off on his own to go get it. Step four happened when Haircut was told to take a cab, not the ATOM suit because what could possibly go wrong sending out their unluckiest member on their unlucky team into Central City unprotected during one of the unluckiest years of the twenty-first century?

Step five, not ordering lunch. Mick wanted lunch.

Step six was, after spending nearly an hour arguing if Jitters constituted as a real lunch (it didn’t), skipping lunch because they got a call from the idiots at S.T.A.R. Labs.

Step seven was answering that call.

Sure, Mick might have gotten a little joy out of how Rip’s voice went painful, in the same way that gargling glass was painful, when he choked out the tired words, “Weird, Mr. Wells? We’re on a time machine from the future speaking to a man from a different universe.”

He would have enjoyed it a lot more with a sandwich.

“I think – well, it’s what you’d call a doozy,” HR said in more words than necessary, Mick thought that he like the Wells that was evil better than this one but only grumbled that one to himself. “Francisco and Caitlyn can explain it better and you’ll probably want to see for yourself. It’s just a _little_ problem… get it? You’ll get it later. That’ll be funny, later. Anyways, see you soon. Yeah?”

Step seven was going.

“That’s…that’s Ray?”

Mick snorted, “I get, ‘little’, funny.”

“How can that be Ray? That’s just a kid!”

The kid was sitting cross-legged on the med in the medbay, Mick could tell from where he stood that the kid was scrawny. Not exactly tall but not short, lanky thin limbs folded in on themselves and that strong jawline and those cheekbones were now hidden beneath a layer of baby fat. His once handsome face was now just kinda…cute.

Mick needed a drink. Or a sandwich.

“Ray Palmer?” Nate asked again slowly, eyes drifting between Cisco’s unnaturally serious face and the glass separating the cortex from the medbay. Nate stuck a hand above his head, “About this tall, human equivalent of a golden retriever? Four degrees, a gluten allergy, thirty-seven year old Ray Palmer.”

“Yes.”

Mick lost interest when the sputtering started and questions about blood test and ‘are you sure, like, really sure?’ so he wandered off in the direction of food. He plucked up the untouched grilled cheese on the medical tray sitting on the kid’s bed, “What? I missed lunch.”

The kid blinked, shrugged his thin shoulder before snagging a cookie from the plate. He pocketed the chocolate chip cookie before going back to messing with the mess of wires and circuit boards in front of him. He noticed the kid’s yellow ‘Never Trust an Atom, They Make Up Everything’ t-shirt, snorted, “Nice shirt.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you – you’re saying that somebody shrunk Ray?” Jax asked slowly, blood test results that proved that the kid was actually Haircut passing around the Legends. Mick took the Jell-O cup off the tray. “Someone – somebody made Ray…a child?”

“Regressed him to the age of-“

“I can’t believe this.”

“I know it’s hard to-“

“I won?” Jax asked slowly, his face breaking from confusion to a grin. “I won! Pay up, suckers!”

A look was exchanged between Team Flash, a look that said they clearly thought time travel turned their brains to mush (they got that look a lot), and Cisco asked in a cross between amusement and wits-end hysteria, “You bet that somebody would regress – would _de-age_ Ray? Specifically, Ray?”

“Who else would it be but Ray?”

“Woah, wait a minute,” Rip asked, pulling his money away from Jax’s grabbing hand. “What about his mind? Is the regression localized to just his physical form?”

“Yeah, Jax only bet on a physical regression,” Sara added.

“Well, it’s, uh, it’s both.”

“I bet a mental age regression,” Rip pointed out. “I won.”

“You bet that it’d happen to Snart.”

“And then I changed it to Ray when Mr. Snart met his untimely demise.”

“Do you spilt the money then?” Amaya asked.

“Or the winner is somebody that bet for both a mental and physical age regression,” Sara cut in. “And that it happened to Ray. Do we have somebody with that _amazing_ foresight?”

The question hung in the air and then shattered to the floor with Jax groaned and Sara exclaimed, “Ha! Hand it over, boys, Momma needs some new throwing knives.”

Whereas the rest of the team seemed to be accepting the fact that Ray was standing at roughly three and a half feet and looked like he was starting kindergarten with relative ease, Nate was not. Nate could not, “That’s not Ray. That can’t be-“

They lived on a spaceship, traveled through time, and a couple weeks ago, they even met George Washington. This wasn’t even the weirdest thing to happen this week. Mick rolled his eyes and took the fruit cup and plastic fork off the tray.

“-Ray is not a five year old child!”

The kid scoffed offended and stuck up six pudgy indignant fingers to Mick when he looked down at him. Mick broke the seal on the fruit cup before calling over his shoulder, “He’s six, idiot.”

“Yeah,” Cisco sighed, scratching his neck. “That’s really important to him.”

“How did Ray become six years old?” Amaya asked, her eyes kept drifting from genuine concern for Nate’s mental health to shoot Mick disapproving looks. “He was not six when he left the Waverider.”

HR answered that one proudly, stating, “The Babymaker.”

“We’re not calling her that,” Cisco and  Caitlyn said at the same time before Cisco told them, “The Babysitter. A meta that – did you eat all of his food? Uncool, dude.”

Mick shrugged, they skipped lunch.

“A meta-human with the ability to cause rapid regression,” Caitlyn explained. “Both physically and mentally, but otherwise, he is completely healthy. Barry intercepted her before she could age him down to a baby.”

“We didn’t even know it was Ray until we did the blood test.”

“You didn’t ask him his name?”

“Do you know how many people are named Ray?”

“Can it be fixed?” Jax asked. They were more than a little relieved to hear that they were already working on a cure and yes. The suggestion that they take Ray back to the Waverider was met with protest and a whiney, “Why?”

“Well…” Caitlyn trailed off, looking worriedly over to the kid. He was actively listening now, staring at her intently. “This isn’t just regressing people but, uh, K-I-D-N-A-P-P-I-N-G-“

“I’m pretty sure the kid can spell,” Mick muttered. He was ignored.

“-her, uh, victims for weeks now, at least ten of them, and we still don’t know _why_. Randal Travis was aged so far back that he disappeared, we don’t know if-“

“She plans to come back for Ray,” Cisco finished. “Barry barely got to him in time and we think we pissed her off and, uh…” He trailed off, looking over at Ray and then shrugged, “we don’t know if she might want to retaliate against him.”

“He can’t defend himself like this,” Caitlyn finished. “We don’t want him in harm’s way.”

“She could try to take him, “HR inserted bluntly. Ray’s eyes went as big as saucers and HR started to backtrack, “…Or not. We never know, really, until these things happen, _if_ they happen.”

“And it’s not the only reason that you should take him,” Cisco said, listing on his fingers all the reasons, “he almost released a meta, then another meta, broke a three thousand dollar microscope, ate my entire stash of seasonal candy, and well, all those wires? That used to be our microwave.”

“It would be difficult to create a cure, catch The Babysitter, _and_ babysit,” Caitlyn added, looking sadly over to Ray. He went back to the microwave, though Mick didn’t blame him. He was six, not stupid, he could understand that no one wanted him around. “And then there’s Savitar.”

It was settled then.

The ninth step was agreeing.

The ease in which it was to convince a six year old with even half the brain of Ray to come with a group of criminals onto a spaceship was more than a little unsettling to Mick so he considered that to be step ten.

Though, when he really thought about it, this was the same idiot that managed to lose his suit in feudal Japan and got his ass handed to him in a Russian prison for being too nice. Was he supposed to be surprised that the same idiot managed to run into the only age regressing metahuman in Central City? He was not.

Step eleven, Nate Heywood was an absolute idiot.

They were a bunch of only children or younger siblings and despite how immature they sometimes acted, no one really knew what to do with a child. And even Mick wasn’t tactless enough to suggest that Rip watch the kid after he muttered on his way to the captain’s quarters that Ray looked like Jonas.

Mick’s own track record with family should have barred him from the equation completely which was why Nate assured everybody a half dozen time on the way to the Waverider that 1) kids under eighty pounds should be using a booster seat and 2) he’s got this. He used to babysit his cousins all the time when he was a teenager so he was good with kids.

 _Great_ , he was great with kids. That was what he said.

It turned out, Nate’s babysitting method was to throw as many dumb things as he could find on the Waverider (i.e. Kendra’s abandoned rainbow set of markers, a binder of blank paper, and the game of scrabble they banned from ever being played again) and sat back to watch what stuck. What stuck was none of it.

Mick thought that Nate and his ‘method’ were pretty stupid. It was obvious from the beginning that Haircut was never going to be a normal kid. The man held four degrees, two of which he got for fun, built a multibillion dollar company before he was thirty and blew himself up building a suit that shrunk to the size of an atom.

 _He_ was the reason that Nate could steel up but for some reason, the moron still thought that Ray was the type of kid that’d be genuinely interested in a goddamn Rubrik’s cube.

Ray was an idiot but he was also a genius, Mick pointed out after Ray solved the Rubrik’s cube in less than a minute and sat it back down in front of Nate. It meant that this kid was likely also a genius to some degree.

“What would you suggest then, Rory?” Nate asked sarcastically, mixing up the cube and sitting it back in front of Ray. It was ignored. “Want me to catch myself on fire to entertain him?”

“Yeah, that would work.”

Unbelievably, Mick was the one that reminded them of how much Ray geeked out over the knights at Camelot and meeting that Star Wars guy and from that, Nate came up with the idea of showing Ray all of the Star Wars movies.

Ray had been excited about that, nodded happily along to Nate as he suggested making popcorn and using the viewing room. He even listened attentively as Nate bragged about saving George Lucas and inspiring him to make the movies.

Nate idiocy bled through that bright idea when he decided to show those movies in chronological order. It was Nate’s fault that after sitting through the Phantom Menace, Ray no longer liked him, “You ruined Star Wars.”

“I didn’t-“

“You said you _inspired_ him,” Ray accused, looking all the more like he was going to throw a tantrum. “You ruined Star Wars!”

Amaya made the decision that maybe a marathon wasn’t all that great of an idea after all and took him to the galley for a snack. Mick just so happened to finally be eating that sandwich in the galley, Ray started gravitating towards him after that.

That was problem twelve.

Mick didn’t like kids. Hell, Mick didn’t like anybody but he especially didn’t like kids. He most definitely didn’t like kids that used to be metal-wearing billionaire idiots that got turned into kids. Mick like Nate the least.

Ray also liked Nate the least because he told the man that very thing when he came in to get him.

Step thirteen, the final step, into Mick’s problematic day came when the idiot Speedster needed back up and not of the ‘catch-everything-on-fire’ variety so Mick was told that he should hang back. Someone had to watch the kid anyways and well, “Me?”

“Him?”

“Let Pretty do it.”

“No, I need Nate with me,” Sara stated in her command voice. “Stein is still visiting family, Jax is still fixing the replicator, and well, Ray doesn’t even like Nate.”

That had been hilarious up until this very moment.

“I’m not really comfortable with this, Sara,” Nate stated. “Ray is-“

“Going to be fine,” Sara stated. Mick was not convinced and neither was Nate so she added rather unhelpfully, “Somebody needs to be here to look after him.”

“Amaya should do it, she’s had a kid in her future. It’d be practiced.”

Amaya barely acknowledged him but Mick got the feeling that he was being watch like a tiger so he let that line of defense drop, “What about the kid, Jax.”

“Jax is fixing the replicator,” Sara repeated. “Ray is a good kid, Mick.”

That meant nothing to him.

He was six. His parents had left him alone all the time at that age, how much damage could a six year old do to – nevermind.

So, that was where Mick was now, standing in the doorway of the Galley watching the kid eat a cupcake. He was asking Gideon questions about how she worked, if she’d ever read an Iron Man comic, and why everyone referred to her as a girl when she was an AI.

He clammed up immediately when he noticed Mick and told him sheepishly with chocolate icing around his mouth that Gideon said he could have sweets, “Sara said that Gideon was always right.”

Mick didn’t actually care and grunted to convey that.

He did make sure that the kid also had a sandwich but not because he cared, he just remembered Snart making his little sister sandwiches a lot and didn’t want to listen to Sara bitch at him for letting the kid starve. So what if he made sure to grab that gluten free bread.

The kid didn’t talk all that much.

Not to Mick, anyways, and not really to anybody else. Even his questions to Gideon were far and few between.

He hadn’t even asked once about his parents, or home, or why nothing resembled the mid-eighties. It made Mick wonder briefly about what Haircut had meant exactly when he said ‘lonely childhood’ but he dismissed the thought. Past was the past, why should he care about someone else’s.

He wasn’t going to complain about the kid being quiet. If he was going to be stuck with babysitting duty those S.T.A.R. Labs nerds figured out a cure to their ‘small’ problem, it was better if the kid didn’t say anything at all.

Haircut talked too much as an adult anyways and what little the kid had said revealed a squeaky little kid voice that he thought was annoying. The kid was happy enough to tinker around with a gauntlet prototype that Haircut had scrapped and he was quiet enough while doing it.

This was a good thing, a very good thing, except when the kid would stop tinkering and just stare.

He’d stare the way that kids sometimes did when they noticed the burns on Mick’s hands but the kid wasn’t looking at his hands, just staring. Staring like Mick was a calculation that he couldn’t figure out with eyes that were far too critical and smart for a six year old. Mick didn’t like it.

After the fourth or fifth time, he finally snapped, “What?”

The kid startled, dropping the screwdriver in his hand onto the table with a loud clatter. It rolled off the table and onto the floor, Ray scrambled to get it while avoiding Mick’s eyes. Eventually the curiosity won out and he asked, “What do you do?”

Mick gave the kid a look that suggested that he should stop talking but Ray was just as bad as missing cues as a kid as his adult self because he elaborated, “Sara is a ninja, Nate is the Silver Surfer, and Rip is from Doctor Who. What’s your superpower?”

“I catch things on fire.”

“Like the Human Torch?”

“No,” He answered, thinking briefly about sending the kid off to go find Jax to see a real human torch. He found himself instead gesturing to his gun still strapped to his leg, “With this.”

“Oh,” Ray said, looking complexed at the gun. Mick thought that he might have been a little disappointed but then his face lit up and he grinned, “Awesome! Can I see?”

“…No.”

“Please?”

“No,” He repeated, it was less of a growl and more of a warning that would have made the hardest of criminals shake in their boots.

Ray pulled the crumbled cookie from his pocket and held it out to him, “I’ll give you this.”

“I said no.”

The kid just pouted, following behind Mick as he went to fed Axel and then sulked around the ship, sighing loudly. Mick thought that he lost the kid to Jax when he stopped in the fabrication room but Mick had never been that lucky.

He had a good ten minutes of peace before Ray popped back up by his side on the bridge, climbing into the chair next to him and sighing, “I have a badge in fire safety.”

“I don’t care.”

“That’s more than you have,” Ray pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I built a fire from dry leaves and a magnifying glass.”

Mick wondered briefly what Leonard would do in this situation since he had had a kid sister but the thought only amused him because this was the only situation where that situation wouldn’t end in a felony. He settled on entertaining the kid for the moment, “And how did that go?”

Ray waivered, “It went – it was… Fluffy’s fur _grew_ back.”

Mick chuckled and Ray waivered a little more, his bottom lip wobbled before he blurted out, “I lied!”

“What?”

“I lied!” Ray blurted out, voice cracking and eyes wide. Shit, the kid might cry. “I don’t have my fire safety badge but I’m going to. Soon! I promise – I shouldn’t have lied. It’s not the way of the Scouts.”

“We all lie, kid, no reason to cry over it.”

“You’re not mad?”

“No.”

Ray seemed to weight that and then broached the question again, “Can I see your gun now?”

“Didn’t you parents tell you what happens when you play with fire?” He asked. “Remember Fluffy.”

“They’re not home a lot,” He admitted with a shrug. “Did they say when they’ll be back?”

‘ _Awe, there it is,’_ Mick thought, scratching his head before shrugging.

“Oh,” Ray deflated a bit before perking up again. “That’s okay, you are _so_ much cooler than Mrs. Arnold. She’s super mean all the time.”

“Thanks, kid.”

“They’re not bad parents,” Ray said as if he was reading Mick’s very thought. “They’re the best. My mom says that I’m her ‘Ray of Sunshine.”

“Okay.”

“They’re just _busy_ ,” He stressed in a way that felt he was repeating someone else’s words. “And I – I’m weird, that’s what Sydney says.”

“I’m very smart,” Ray added, unnaturally serious even for his older self. “I took a test, I go to a special school for smart kids and I – I’m the smartest. Mom and Dad are just normal smart, they like Sydney better ‘cause he’s normal smart, too.”

Mick honestly didn’t know how to respond to that and the silence dragged on between them awkwardly. Ray was looking like a kicked puppy and Snart’s ghost was annoying not there to offer any advice so when the kid asked, “Can you catch something on fire now?”

Mick didn’t think twice, “Yeah, let’s go.”

Nate was growing accustom to all the weird, he thought. After meeting his grandfather, curing hemophilia with modified Nazi serum, turning to steel, and learning that everything he thought he knew about Britannia in the sixth century was wrong, yeah, he accustomed to weird.

Yeah, maybe Ray being turned into a historian-hating six year old threw him through a loop but like, c’mon. What were the odds, right?

There was nothing that was going to surprise him after that. Or so he thought.

Nothing in his life has ever been quite as alarming or heart-attack inducing as walking into the cargo bay to find half the room ablaze. Except maybe, seeing your local pyromaniac pointing what was basically a portable flame thrower at their six year old engineer with a shield. “Mick! What the – what the hell?”

He lowered the gun, “What?”

“We said to babysit him, not to kill him!”

“I am babysitting,” Mick growled, pointing the gun back up.

Ray jumped up from behind the shield to see what was going on, wearing Snart’s googles and a pair of chard oven mitts. He took the momentary distraction to lift the shield and take off running through the smoke.

Nate couldn’t even find it in himself to respond, he was too flabbergasted, so he just gestured around the room in a way that he hoped conveyed that arson was not a part of babysitting.

Ray jumped out of the smoke next to Mick with a grin that boarded on the side of manic glee and dropped the smoking shield on the floor before giving Mick a quick unwanted hug. He exclaimed, “Awesome! It’s just like Mythbusters!”

“See,” Mick gestured to the kid. “It’s educational.”

“Can we blow something up next?” Ray asked.

“That – you can’t – he’s – that shield _is_ Italian Renaissance!” Nate exclaimed, finally able to land his thoughts on something other than ‘what the actual hell.’ He went to grab the shield before they could damage it anymore but had to drop it because yeah, it had just been on fire. It was extremely hot, as Ray helpfully pointed out.

Nate sighed and then sighed again, “What are you doing?”

Mick shrugged, the kid wanted to see how the gun worked and he could always use the practice with moving targets anyways. It was educational…and fun.

“Mick is a superhero!” Ray exclaimed, jumping up and down beside Mick in excitement. He stuck up one of his mitt covered hands for Mick to high-five and then broke out in giggles when he actually did. “That was so _awesome!_ You’re the best superhero ever.”

“You can’t just-“

“It’s okay, Mr. Nate, I, uh-“ Ray shot a look to Mick, “I have a badge in fire safety.”

Nate didn’t seem to notice that Ray was the worst liar ever because he exclaimed with a finger jabbed in Mick’s direction, “Does he?”

“I don’t know,” Ray answered, shrugging. “I can talk to my scout leader.”

“That’s alright, kid,” Mick muttered and then shoved the kid off to go get cleaned up before he showed him how to properly rob a bank.

“You’re not – that’s not happening.”

“Mick rolled his eyes and stopped Ray at the door, “Hey kid, show Nate what I taught you. Thumb on the outside.”

Ray curled his hand into a fist, correcting his position of his thumb and then socked Nate in the thigh. It wasn’t enough to actually hurt but it surprised him enough to hiss, “You’re a bad influence.”

When Sara and Amaya arrived back to the Waverider a few hours later, they had Martin with them and the cure. Nate had every intention of tattling that Mick was trying to roast the kid but something better came up, “Follow me.”

“Shh,” He shushed them, leading them to just outside of Mick’s room before whispering, “Gideon, open the door.”

“Gideon, take pictures,” Sara commanded and then awed along with Amaya at the sight of Ray curled up against Mick side, both of them out like a light.

“Adorable, right?”

“I think we should hold off on that cure for the moment,” Sara said. “Sweet dreams, boys.”


End file.
